Open Source Energy Monitoring

Chasing 'trons

An open source Zigbee wireless device based on a Propeller MCU. Cocoa UI for Apple Mac OSX.

Features: ZigBee Wireless, True RMS voltage and current measurements for accurate readings with noisy loads, Power factor calculated with Fast Fourier Transform with possibility of using FFT for Total Harmonic Distortion calculation, Propeller 8 core microcontroller running at 80 MHz allows for lots of number crunching, Line powered.

Knowledge Is Power project (KiP)

An Ethernet enabled low cost open source energy monitoring board. Java software released under GNU GPL3. Software calculates volts/watts/amps with data displayed in real time and storage available. 10A and 100A sensor input. Based on ATMEGA328-AU-ND microcontroller and ENC28J60-I/SS-ND ethernet. Future plans include a realtime database and WattDepot service integration.

Open Energy Monitor

"This is a project to develop and build open source energy monitoring, control and analysis tools for energy efficiency and distributed renewable microgeneration"

Hardware is open source and designs are available for download and manufacture by commercial entities. Based on ATmega 328, Arduino Uno. Modules are currently supplied in kit form and require soldering skills and firmware loading to complete.

A commercial product (Waspmote) is available with full support + FCC and CE certification.

SEGMeter (Smart Energy Groups)

"Our objective is to provide a low cost, open source energy measurement platform in kit form to allow the makers and hobbyists to follow a step by step guides to build, commission an energy measurement and efficiency solution that is internet connect-able to the smartenergygroups.com website, allowing the analysis of energy usage data and the ability to smart control devices based on rules and schedules"

PowerBox (Cornell)

Cliff Jao, Xi Guo. Based on Mega32 ADC sampling at 1Khz.

"Our device calculates and reports the following parameters in real time: Real power, Apparent power, Power factor, RMS Voltage, RMS Current, Frequency, Energy usage (Kilowatt-Hours). In addition to measurements, our device also has a remote switch that allows the computer to turn the power on or off and set wattage limits for auto shutdown"

Zigbee standards and energy monitoring

Zigbee is an open standard for wireless communication between electrical devices in Home Area Networks (HAN). The Zigbee standard is currentlyincompatible with the GPL.

Even so - there are many open source projects which implement or interface the Zigbee standard:

FreakZ - Freaklabs leads the early stage development of an open source Zigbee stack for micro-controllers. This has been ported to Arduino. ChibiArduino - a Zigbee enabled arduino kitset is now available. Freaklabs frequently blogs on Zigbee related topics.